Fully Occupy your HOME (s)

I haven’t been following the “Occupy Wall Street” movement very closely.

Nor have I been following the anti-occupy Wall Street denunciations at all. I saw some acknowledgment of the movement on the Sunday news shows this weekend, and the concensus of denunciation and/or dismissal by the talking heads.

I enjoyed the glee that Christiane Amanpour expressed in her sympathetic laughter at the occupy Wall Street’s representative’s comment that he was the only member of the actual working class to have historically appeared on her show.

The rational criticism that I have heard of the demonstrations is that they are only a beginning identification that something is wrong, but with limited credible framing of analysis and with limited framing of proposal for improvement.

I personally believe that the remedy for our long and short-term social ills rest in the discussion of social scales, that comprise an ecology of social scales with varying roles, possibility, importance.

Each social scale constitutes a setting for BOTH individual initiative AND for shared commonwealth.

There is sufficient commonwealth between all of the social scales (if given enough attention to be a healthy) to ensure that no individual is any irreconcilable fundamental risk (except perhaps personal health) and has a path for commerce and for principled contribution to the greater good.

The current framing of an individual’s economic and work like, is primarily, individual entity relative to “the economy”. “The economy” is global, and requires participation in the scope of institutions that can compete in the global economy. The global economy includes niches that are not of international/global scope, but over time the niches diminish, incorporated into the market of global institutions.

Globalism in that sense destroys the ecology of scales that comprise a healthy portfolio of solutions. If all of the regional solutions to food problems say are non-existent, that only the global specialized supply chain is in effect, dependent on fossil fuels in particular for transit, fertilizer and chemicals, then if there is a disruption to a primary commodity, there is then NO resilient response.

If our agricultural land is consumed by sprawl tract homes, if there is a real crisis in fossil fuel supply, if there is a new blight in mono-cropped corn fields, then we don’t have the flexibility to respond to external challenges.

If however, there is a viable and functional regional food distribution system, alongside a healthy global food distribution system, then an obstacle in one sector just diverts the supply path through a different channel. A blip rather than a catastrophe.

So, what is that we are, what is that we are part of? (to quote an Incredible String Band song from 1969).

We are part of:

Families (say the Witty’s)- With economies within families, comprising BOTH a market exchange system AND a commonwealth that all members are shareholders

Neighborhoods (say precinct 5 in Greenfield, MA under Poet’s Seat)- With economies within neighborhoods, comprising BOTH a market exchange system AND a commonwealth that all members are shareholders

Towns (say Greenfield, MA) – With economies within towns, comprising BOTH a market exchange system AND a commonwealth that all members are shareholders

Micro-regions (say Franklin County or larger the Connecticut River Valley between Springfield and Northfield)- With economies within micro-regions, comprising BOTH a market exchange system AND a commonwealth that all members are shareholders

Macro-regions (say New England) – With economies within macro-regions, comprising BOTH a market exchange system AND a commonwealth that all members are shareholders

Continental (say North America) – With economies within North America, comprising BOTH a market exchange system AND a commonwealth that all members are shareholders

Globe (say earth) – With economies within the globe, comprising BOTH a market exchange system AND a commonwealth that all members are shareholders

Right now some families function dually as both individual exchange systems and commonwealth. Some emphasize one over the other, even to the point of exclusion.

Fewer neighborhoods have really ANY organization or commonwealth or even exchange economy.

Towns have some markets, and some commonwealth in the form of municipalities, but MANY of the them are economically weak to the point of dysfunctionality, and don’t conceive of themselves as a commonwealth, but only limited constitutional obligations.

Micro-regions have some markets, but very very limited commonwealth that anyone can truly participate in. (In Massachusetts, the Boston-centric legislature determined that counties are archaic, unnecessary, an additional bureaucracy with fixed costs. That is well and good for Boston for which the suburban counties should be unified in a planning system with the Boston counties themselves. But, it does not serve Western Massachusetts well at all, for which counties are coherent governing and market scale entities.)

States are our current macro-regions, but they are residual of pre-constitutional literal states, 18th century British colonial residue.

A better form would be macro-regions. In any case, there is commonwealth and some distinct markets within states, but again, states are horridly stressed financially, and don’t often constitute a confident commonwealth, providing a safety net.

Similarly at the continental and global scale. There is some market function and some sense of commonwealth, whether distributed to individuals or universally providing capital in various forms to needed regions, communities, families.

There is a valid republican/ conservative criticism of national only setting of commonwealth and safety net. But, the criticism is only a only a partisan griping currently, and NOT a constructive proposal for an ecology of  universally healthy functioning families, communities, towns, micro-regions, macro-regions, globe.

Markets AND commonwealth at each scale.

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